Forensic medicine during National Socialism
Following the annexation of Austria and the associated assumption of power by the National Socialists in 1938, the Vienna Institute for Forensic Medicine was subject to a process of “nazification” and not just through the field’s close work with the governing legal system.
With its integration into the NS biopolitics, forensic medicine played a key role in areas such as the selective births policy of the Nazis. The task of forensic medical doctors to identify “criminal abortions” was aimed at ensuring the preservation of “valuable public heritage”. Moreover, it prepared decisive reports for castration trials “to stop the spread of hereditary illnesses” and paternity reports “in order to rule out Jewish fathers”.
A cooperation existed between the Institute and the German Air Force from 1940, which led to many dissertations of German students being supervised.
Due to the good connections to Heinrich Himmler, SS Reichsführer and Head of the German Police, and Arthur Nebe, Head of the Reich’s Criminal Investigation Department, the Central Institute of Criminological Medicine was established in Vienna in 1943. Its aim was to prevent crime on the basis of racial biology. The alleged serial killer Bruno Lüdke was subject to a range of hereditary and anthropological tests at the institute before being subject to a fatal experiment, which reflected the most extreme form of National Socialism’s thinking on eugenics.
The role of Vienna’s forensic medicine during National Socialism is described in detail in the German-language book “Wiener Gerichtsmedizin im Nationalsozialismus" by Ingrid Arias and published by Verlagshaus der Ärtze.